MTG Salvation

I was going through some lands and a though occurred to me: There are four guilds in the Ravnica block that are part white, and there are four versions of Plains. Now I know we always get four versions of each basic land, but I think I might have found something.

Did you notice? Here.

Apparently Niv-Mizzet's vanity knows no bounds. It looks like he even managed to get himself carved into some basic lands. What about the others though? I've been able to figure out the islands, but not the rest.

Azorius, Simic, and Dimir in that order. On the Azorius one, notice the eagle and lion heads. The Simic and Dimir should be obvious enough.


Also, while I'm not sure if I've identified the Orzhov Swamp, this looks pretty curious:

So am I onto something or just running in circles?

The creative team at Wizards usually has some pretty extensive "style guides" that contain lots of details for the artists to use in their work. It helps create a consistent "world" in the game.

So although I don't know if what you've found has anything to do with the guild leader's specifically, there will definitely be little things related to the guilds of certain colors on their respective lands.

EDIT: Here's the article on the Zendikar creative process, for example. You can see in some of the sketches how there are little notes about armor and such; these are the things that you can expect to see in a variety of cards, and these things will create a kind of unity between the artworks that contain them.

For anyone interested, I found my answer. It turns out that each basic land DOES belong to a guild. Japanese promos were made:

http://www.trollandtoad.com/Magic-The-Gathering-Singles/3461-1041-1024p1n10.html

Click on their pictures for a better view.

If you zoom in on that Island, there's actually a lion statue on the left.